honestly, in my opinion they are pretty much the same, both a WILD and astral projection or OBE happen in the dream world, In astral projection however, I think the difference may be that you start the dream in your bedroom like a false awakening, but you leave your physical body and can still see it as you float around in the dream landscape of your room

Hey guys, I kinda stumbled upon the forum... I like what I see so far.

My personal view is that all of these experiences we have that don't, as I call it, happen within this physical reality... I call "nonphysical experiences". These include Dreams, Lucid Dreams and Astral Projection/OBEs.

Now, what I feel separates the experiences is how consciously aware you are during the experience.

I wrote an article about it on my website:

I was dreaming this morning and I came to a realization after I awoke. I realized that the term “Conscious awareness” just doesn’t work when using it to describe anything more than your awareness during a dream, or in any case, it makes it more confusing. I need a phrase or phrases to make it easier for new people to learn the concepts and a catch all “Conscious Awareness” just doesn’t do that, because once you pass into Lucid Dreams and even further, Astral Projections, the term begins to fail.

We dream every night of our lives, yet we don’t remember all of them, why? We have varying levels of consciousness through these dreams… everything from not remembering that a dream ever happened, to remembering bits and pieces of a dream, to remembering every last detail of the dream.

I was thinking about how we “remember” our dreams… and I realized that the dreams I remember most, are the ones in which I was most consciously aware in. Not consciously aware in that I knew I was dreaming… but consciously aware that I was experiencing the dream AS it was happening. I call this “Dream Awareness“. Basically, I’m living the dream life as if I was awake and not realizing it’s a dream. I am the actor not realizing he’s in a play. This tends to give me the best chance to remember after I wake.

The next step up from that would be “Lucid Awareness“. This is the point where you know you’re dreaming and you know that what is around you is a dreamscape. You don’t have much more awareness than that though.

After that, I’d call it “Astral Awareness“. At this point, you are as wide awake and aware as if you were awake in the physical reality… except you’re in the nonphysical.

Also, I believe that the line between Lucid Awareness and Astral Awareness can be very blurred. Your awareness can float between that range at any one time during the experience. You’ll start off with Lucid Awareness, then muster up Astral Awareness… after some time, you might lose focus and concentration and drop back down to Lucid Awareness. You could shift back into Dream Awareness too.

For myself, I start off with Dream Awareness, then I’ll shift into Lucid Awareness… after that I’ll do my conversion to bring forth my Astral Awareness. Generally what happens after some time in Astral Awareness is that I’ll just wake up.

So yeah, these are my new “States of Mind”. Hopefully they’ll assist me in helping new members on the Pulse and other forums I frequent.

I believe these are internal experiences, not external... they're not something that happens to you, they're a state of mind that you are.

Kinda just tossing this info out there as feelers to see how the community here takes the ideas.

Ryan, I agree with the way you have defined the different dream states. I have experienced all of these and It seems to me that there is a continuum between these states and not a sharp devision of them. I too have passed from "classical" dream to dream awarenes and then into lucid dreams. I have also experienced what might be called "astral projection" with full mental awareness and then drifted back into a dreamlike state. Could it be that all of these are different levels of the same experience?